Progress updates from Prof. Ying LI of FSS

This semester I introduced Rain Classroom into my GE class on public speaking. The first half of the semester, I used Rain Classroom to organize class discussion and peer evaluation. With class discussion, I assign readings to the whole class to prepare before class. They need to bring questions for small group discussion and then select one person to represent the small group to brief the whole class. I also distribute work sheets with different sets of questions for them to choose from. I also involve the students to use Rain Classroom for speech evaluation, where their polling results, and the bullet comments (弹幕), give their peers instant feedback on the speech performance.

Some students really enjoyed this format. One even made her individual speech talking about flipped classroom and used our class as an example. They enjoyed taking quiz and knowing how their performance was in relative terms with their classmates. The bullet comments function was fun as well. Others were not too thrilled as I had a few occasions where the student’s phone could not scan the QR code to enter the interface, while the rest of the class had no problem using the QR code.

I later stopped using Rain Classroom for taking attendance. Because I have less than 30 students in each class. I found it impossible for me to know my students’ names. So I ended up doing my usual attendance taking by calling their names.

If I am teaching this GE class again, I will make improvements on using Rain Classroom. Especially I will make sure I send PPT before class to help the students make the best out of the reading materials. I will also create quiz for all the audio-visual materials I use, and make sure they watch it before class. So I can make full use of class time for discussion, for practicing, and for Q & A.